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Sylvain Kalache Contributor Sylvain Kalache is the co-founder of Holberton, an edtech company training digital talent in more than 10 countries. An entrepreneur and software engineer, he has worked in the tech industry for more than a decade. Part of the team that led SlideShare to be acquired by LinkedIn, he has written for CIO
Visa and Mastercard payments are convenient for customers, but can cost merchants high processing fees. Atoa Payments wants to provide a cheaper alternative that is still easy for customers to use. The London-based fintech announced today that it has raised $2.2 million in pre-seed funding. The round was led by Leo Capital and Passion Capital,
It hasn’t been a kind year for blockchain-based startup activity. In addition to an asset-price correction during a general venture capital slowdown, web3-focused tech upstarts have also had to deal with a series of intra-industry crises that have, at times, dominated technology headlines. The Terra/Luna mess comes to mind. As does the meltdown of Three
Back in January, Natasha covered Juro’s Series B round, which added $23 million to its coffers. Juro aims to put an end to contract negotiation madness, moving the workflows out of Microsoft Word and a handful of other sub-par tools to an all-in-one, web-based platform for contract negotiation-to-signature workflow. It seems like a very good
There are a few sources of power that are “free” here on Earth, namely wind, solar, hydro, and geothermal. Humans have been tapping hydro and wind for millennia, and we’re getting pretty good at harnessing the power of the sun. But with geothermal, we’re still not expertly exploiting the heat that’s generated deep within the
The US has had solo VC fund managers for many years but the trend is only just starting to catch on in Europe. One of the newest is Underline Ventures, started this year by Bogdan Iordache in Romania. His career trajectory towards being a Solo GP fits the profile: a former entrepreneur, a key player
Brace for yet another expansion to the UK’s Online Safety Bill: The Ministry of Justice has announced changes to the law which are aimed at protecting victims of revenge porn, pornographic deepfakes and other abuses related to the taking and sharing of intimate imagery without consent — in a crackdown on a type of abuse
Many startups are overvalued. But because they are also well-stocked with cash, they haven’t had to raise new funding at a lower or flat valuation — yet. However, new data from Carta found that cracks are starting to show. Startup equity infrastructure platform Carta found that a record number of startup employee stock grants — which
Last week, Ramp sent a message to crypto companies using its corporate card services saying that it is significantly lowering spending limits and mandating new requirements. Some users were temporarily suspended from spending altogether. “In light of recent unprecedented events in the cryptocurrency, blockchain, NFT and DeFi ecosystem, we are conducting a review of all
Independent legal analysis of a controversial UK government proposal to regulate online speech under a safety-focused framework — aka the Online Safety Bill — says the draft bill contains some of the broadest mass surveillance powers over citizens every proposed in a Western democracy which it also warns pose a risk to the integrity of
Elon Musk said Thursday Twitter will grant “a general amnesty” to accounts that had been suspended from the platform beginning next week. The CEO posted a poll the day earlier over whether the platform should restore affected accounts. The news comes within a week of Musk also ending former president Donald Trump’s ban from the
To get a roundup of TechCrunch’s biggest and most important stories delivered to your inbox every day at 3 p.m. PDT, subscribe here. Today’s prize (a muted ‘hrmph!’ and a solemn nod) for best headline goes to Devin, and given that we’re sneaking up on Black Friday, we have some of the best tech deals
What a decade this year has been. While prediction pieces always come with a large asterisk because no one knows literally anything about what may play out in the future — such as massive shocks to large startup sectors — our perspectives about 2022 have aged … interestingly. Last year, Natasha Mascarenhas, Alex Wilhelm, and
Stellantis, the parent company to brands like Jeep, Dodge, Fiat, Maserati and Peugeot, said Thursday it would reorganize its European dealer networks in July 2023 in an effort to cut costs and support its investment into electrification. Starting next summer, Stellantis said it would end all current sales and services contracts with dealers in Austria,
In another move that’s being frowned upon by European Union regulators, Elon Musk-owned Twitter has closed its Brussels office per a report in the Financial Times — citing sources with knowledge of the departures. Staffers in the office were focused on European Union digital policy, working in close proximity to the seat of power of
Google Cloud has partnered with SuperGaming to offer the Indian gaming startup’s proprietary gaming engine, SuperPlatform, to developers worldwide, the latest in a series of recent steps from the Android-maker to expand focus into the gaming industry. The cloud arm of the search giant said Thursday that as part of its partnership, it will offer
When Female Invest launched in 2019, it did so with the goal of creating a community where women who wanted to invest in the stock market, but weren’t sure where to start, could gain the knowledge and confidence to take the plunge. Now, its users will be able to do so all within the Female
How many VC funds can you name where the three partners all had babies whilst raising the fund, have deep connections in Asia as well as Europe and the US, and include actress Anne Hathaway as an LP? Not many I’d hazard. But that’s the profile of Pact, a new Seed VC fund launched with
The FTX drama is not over yet — and Amazon wants a piece of it. The company is partnering with Russo Brothers, best known for Marvel movies, to make a show on the spectacular collapse of the giant cryptocurrency empire. Amazon has partnered with the duo’s production house AGBO to make the show, which will
Eaglebrook Advisors Founding Board Member Mike Alfred joins Caroline Hyde to discuss how the implosion of FTX is a big blow to credibility and trust in the crypto space. ——– Like this video? Subscribe to Bloomberg Technology on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCrM7B7SL_g1edFOnmj-SDKg Watch the latest full episodes of “Bloomberg Technology” with Emily Chang here: Get the latest
Dat Bike is on a mission to put more electric bikes on Vietnam’s roads. The startup said today it has raised $8 million led by returning investor Singapore-based firm Jungle Ventures, just seven months after its first round of funding was announced. GSR Ventures and Delivery Hero Ventures also participated in this round, along with
The market for corporate training, which Allied Market Research estimates is worth over $400 billion, has grown substantially in recent years as companies realize the cost savings in upskilling their workers. One PwC report found that teaching employees additional skills can save a company between 43% and 66% of layoff costs alone, depending on the
Shadow is now officially a tech company with two different products. In addition to its cloud computing service that works particularly well for games, the company is launching Shadow Drive, a cloud storage service based on Nextcloud. “It’s now been a year and a half since Octave Klaba acquired Blade with a vision: take down
Starting today, November 23, “Star Wars” fans can stream the first two episodes of Disney+’s “Andor” on Hulu. Just ahead of Thanksgiving in the U.S., Hulu subscribers have access to episode 1, “Kassa,” and episode 2, “That Would Be Me,” until December 7. Also, the first two episodes will air across three Disney-owned networks ABC,
Things are bleak in the tech sphere as we close out a year defined by plummeting stocks, persistent mass layoffs and a fall from grace for major social media companies. Yet Stanford dropout Teddy Solomon’s story of co-founding Fizz is so reminiscent of Facebook that he was introduced to his investor and now-CEO Rakesh Mathur
Some students at the MyTechBestFriend academy have always been a little suspicious of the program and its founder, Mary Awodele. Since its founding in 2020, a whisper network murmured that many of the materials taught by the academy were plagiarized from various other online programs, such as those from Google or Salesforce. Founded by Awodele
UK-based electric two-wheeler manufacturer Zapp Electric Vehicles is merging with a blank-check company to become publicly traded on the Nasdaq at a post-money valuation of $573 million. Zapp says it will use the proceeds from the merger to bring its long-awaited i300 high performance, seated city scooter to market. The i300 was initially revealed back
Back in August, the FDA announced it was making a big change in the world of hearing aids: From October onwards, hearing aids would be available without a prescription, over the counter. In a world where getting fitted for a hearing aid could be very expensive, and the hearing aids themselves were wrapped up in